


Vest Pocket Kodak

by juliandarling



Category: At Swim Two Boys - O'Neill
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-18
Updated: 2010-07-18
Packaged: 2017-10-10 16:01:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/101537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/juliandarling/pseuds/juliandarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He took the camera with him to the sea wall, near the Forty Foot, and took photograph after photograph of the white-crested waves, as if Jim Mack might appear, a pale smear of flesh in the hapless sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vest Pocket Kodak

**Author's Note:**

>   
> **Warnings**: Underage characters committing lewd acts, implied clergy abuse, language, unresolved sexual tension, multiple personalities.  
> **Word Count**: 821  
> **Beta**: [](http://la-dissonance.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**la_dissonance**](http://la-dissonance.dreamwidth.org/)  
> **Author's Notes**: I think I might be the only person to ever write fanfiction based on this novel?[ EDIT: Such lies. Look at this: [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/fortyfoot/profile)[**fortyfoot**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/fortyfoot/) ] This means ya'll should come to my one-person fandom. I don't think that you have to read the book to understand the fic, but by all means, read the sodding book. It's brilliant, and I stayed up all night reading it. [Here](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZP-4B7kHqA) is a good version of Siúil a Rúin, but if you're looking for a more [modern version](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5R9Z2Kd8RY), Celtic Woman is always awesome. [This](http://www.camerapedia.org/wiki/Vest_Pocket_Kodak) is the camera. Thanks to [](http://la-dissonance.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**la_dissonance**](http://la-dissonance.dreamwidth.org/), my awesome beta and friend. All remaining mistakes are my fault.

> I'll sell my rock, I'll sell my reel  
> I'll sell my only spinning wheel  
> To buy my love a sword of steel  
> Is go dté tú mo mhuirnín slán
> 
> Siúil, siúil, siúil a rúin  
> Siúil go socair agus siúil go ciúin  
> Siúil go doras agus éalaigh liom  
> Is go dté tú mo mhúirnín slán  
> \-- _[Siúil a Rúin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si%C3%BAil_A_R%C3%BAin)_, Irish folk song

\---

  
_Christmas, 1915_.

  
She was very stiff as he opened his present, as if she were afraid he would dislike it. He didn't know how to tell her he had not expected anything, and that after two years in prison, he found the concepts of gifts somewhat foreign.

  
Aunt Eva had always been generous, but her presents had always been practical. Cuff links, a pocket watch. They were always beautiful, but immensely impersonal. Not unlike their giver.

  
He peeled the last of the scrolled paper away and pulled the lid of the cardboard box off gently. The mauve silk ribbon from the package pooled in his lap, and he lifted the present slowly from its gauzy tissue paper.

  
She watched him closely as he opened the small leather pouch.

  
"Aunt Eva, it's lovely," he said, caressing the sides of the camera, letting his fingers linger on the shutter release.

  
She rustled her gown slightly, and smiled without teeth. "They told me that many soldiers on the front carry these."

  
He opened the pamphlet and let his eyes skim the instructions. With trembling fingers, he unfurled the folding lens and held the machine up to look through the viewfinder. She smiled at him and he depressed the trigger.

\---

  
_January, 1915_

__  
He took the camera with him to the sea wall, near the Forty Foot, and took photograph after photograph of the white-crested waves, as if Jim Mack might appear, a pale smear of flesh in the hapless sea.

  
\---  
_February, 1915_

__  
The gardener's son was awash with freckles and scars, and the deepest parts of him sprouted hair the same colour as his brazen red head. He made low moaning sounds, not unlike the lowing of an un-milked cow, while MacMurrough fucked him in the enormous bed that he had, until recently, not considered his own.

  
He took a handful of that red, thick hair and pulled, eliciting yet another deep belly moan of ecstasy. He could not help but imagine that it was Jim moaning beneath him, dichromatic in the yellowing candle light.

  
Or perhaps Doyler. Or perhaps the two of them, in his enormous, lonely bed, wrapped around each other, freckled and dark-haired. One with blue cornflower eyes, the other with eyes like pitch. Entwined like vines, kissing and sucking and sodomising until they slept and dreamed of nothing but each other.

  
He kissed the boy's cheek, and it was not smooth and pristine as he imagined Jim's to be, but rough with the ruddiness of adolescence. The boy did not flush, as MacMurrough knew Jim did, did not flush like an innocent. He merely moaned and rutted back against him, with the wantonness of an experienced lover.

  
MacMurrough did not want to know where the gardener's boy had learned to writhe and prostrate himself like a seasoned whore, although he imagined that the lithe creature attracted the gaze of the priests and brothers of the frock.

  
– Thinking of priests fucking boys, eh? said Dick, piping in at always the wrong moments. Step aside, MacMurrough, let me do the riding.

  
And MacMurrough let Dick take the reins, if it were, and found himself watching Dick (as himself) fucking the gardener's boy, who, unobservant little thing, hardly noticed the change in personality.

  
– Gracious, oh dear, Nurse Temple said. Dick, don't hurt him.

  
Yes, Dick, don't hurt him, MacMurrough chided.

  
\---

  
Aunt Eva had left a reminder at his place at the breakfast table, in her spiderish, pointed script, that the Sullivanses were visiting for tea with their daughter Emily, and that it was imperative he attend. Not a suggestion, but an order.  
He went out, camera strap slung over his shoulder.

  
The gardener's boy had left at dawn. MacMurrough was still unsure of his name.

  
\---

  
He was sure the ocean air and the spray of sea were not good for the camera's mechanical parts, but he could think of no other place in the whole of Ireland that he would want to remember.

  
And there he was, standing at the dive board, back straight and true as he stared out onto the blue. MacMurrough's hands, chapped by wind, shook as pulled the camera from its pouch.

  
Jim must have looked up to the battery walls, and seen him, coat flapping in the cursed wind, and MacMurrough caught sight of him waving, no doubt yelling.

  
"MacEmm! MacEmm!" He could almost hear the nickname from down the Forty Foot, but the wind caught the words and tossed them back to the sea. He fumbled with the camera before using the battery wall as a brace for his shaking wrists.

  
He wished Doyler were here, to put a steady hand on his shoulder. Go on, ye stupid lad. Take the damned photo.

  
He closed his eyes and pressed the trigger.


End file.
